Cinecon Quick Update

[Jim Harwood]

Thanks for the reviews Chris!

We do try to get film on everything that we possibly can at Cinecon, though unfortunately it's a changing digital world out there and the archives don't always have film prints available. That was the case with FEARLESS FAGAN. Warner Bros has no available prints. We even thought of re-running SKY FULL OF MOON, which we ran in 35mm years ago, but that too has been withdrawn from circulation in 35mm. For FEARLESS FAGAN we actually ended up having to run the Warner Archive DVD, that's all the studio could give us. Surprisingly it looked pretty good on the huge Egyptian screen. Going forward though, we'll always try to get 35mm first.

Christopher Jacobs wrote:

FEARLESS FAGAN (1952) ** 1/2
Pleasant little movie about a young circus clown and his only friend, who happens to be a full-grown lion (the Fagan of the title). Problems arise when he's drafted and decides to take the lion with him to his army base, and then visiting entertainer Janet Leigh soon gets involved. Based on a true story, some of the background was related to the audience after the screening by star and Cinecon guest Carleton Carpenter. This movie was shown in a pretty good digital copy that appeared to some sort of high-end standard-definition format like Beta SP.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Thanks for the reviews Chris!

We do try to get film on everything that we possibly can at Cinecon, though unfortunately it's a changing digital world out there and the archives don't always have film prints available. That was the case with FEARLESS FAGAN. Warner Bros has no available prints. We even thought of re-running SKY FULL OF MOON, which we ran in 35mm years ago, but that too has been withdrawn from circulation in 35mm. For FEARLESS FAGAN we actually ended up having to run the Warner Archive DVD, that's all the studio could give us. Surprisingly it looked pretty good on the huge Egyptian screen. Going forward though, we'll always try to get 35mm first.

Christopher Jacobs wrote:

FEARLESS FAGAN (1952) ** 1/2
Pleasant little movie about a young circus clown and his only friend, who happens to be a full-grown lion (the Fagan of the title). Problems arise when he's drafted and decides to take the lion with him to his army base, and then visiting entertainer Janet Leigh soon gets involved. Based on a true story, some of the background was related to the audience after the screening by star and Cinecon guest Carleton Carpenter. This movie was shown in a pretty good digital copy that appeared to some sort of high-end standard-definition format like Beta SP.

Wow, for just a DVD it looked really good! I figured it was a standard-def source, but I couldn't see much if any compression artifacts. Properly mastered DVDs from good scans can approach Blu-ray quality, especially when upscaled to 1080p on a Blu-ray player, even if true "HD" looks better (with six times the resolution). Still, there's nothing quite like real film (although now that Sony has a 4k video monitor and somebody now has an 8k camera, that may be changing soon). However sharp HD technology can be, it rarely reproduces the organic quality of genuine film (besides being obsolete by the time it gets on the market, whereas 35mm film's basic specs haven't really changed substantially in about 120 years!

[silentfilm]

Did anybody read the late F. Gwenplaine MacIntyre's review of The Bedroom Window on the IMDB? He gives the film 1 star out of ten -- he hated the whole thing. He does get May McAvoys's hair color wrong, so he may not really seen the movie. I can understand that he wouldn't think it was as fun as I did, but he really shows what a hack film historian he was with this review.

[rudyfan]

Thanks for all the updates. I'm bummed I was unable to make the trip. Planning for Cinecon 49

[CoffeeDan]

I hear you, Donna. I want to see at least one Cinecon in my lifetime!

[Stan16mm]

Regarding "Just Around The Corner". There is another 16mm print of this title extant, which i was told about from the owner only days before the Cinecon screening.

[Michael O'Regan]

I want to see at least one Cinecon in my lifetime!

Likewise.

[Brooksie]

Did anybody read the late F. Gwenplaine MacIntyre's review of The Bedroom Window on the IMDB? He gives the film 1 star out of ten -- he hated the whole thing. He does get May McAvoys's hair color wrong, so he may not really seen the movie. I can understand that he wouldn't think it was as fun as I did, but he really shows what a hack film historian he was with this review.

The May McAvoy reference gave the game away as far as I was concerned. There are other small plot details that aren't right, either. It struck me as a rather mean-spirited review regardless of whether he saw it, though especially so if he didn't.

They've since published my short review, and I see that Bruce's is up too - I hope some other Cinecongoers who enjoyed it submit theirs as well. I'm now hoping to see some of William De Mille and Clara Beranger's other collaborations to see if they stack up as well.

[Jim Harwood]

Did anybody read the late F. Gwenplaine MacIntyre's review of The Bedroom Window on the IMDB? He gives the film 1 star out of ten -- he hated the whole thing. He does get May McAvoys's hair color wrong, so he may not really seen the movie. I can understand that he wouldn't think it was as fun as I did, but he really shows what a hack film historian he was with this review.

I had read that review as well and so I went in to the screening last weekend thinking it was going to be a dud. Fortunately it turned out to be a fun picture. Time for someone to update IMDB!